Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 15 April 1892
Conisborough Notes – Altered Townships
Anyone who has not been to Conisborough and Denaby for a year or two would be greatly for surprise at the altered appearance in the two townships. Instead of wide green fields on the Cadeby side are extensive railway sidings and engine-sheds and workshops, the “cage” constantly bringing up from below debris which is deposited around. And at Denaby houses have so rapidly been added that shortly there will be no intervening fields between here and Conisborough. I saw by a paragraph in the “Times” last week that Messrs. Kilner Bros. had had plans passed for upwards of a hundred more cottages. Even whom these are up there will be still a demand for more dwellings, owing to the work carried on industrially in this direction.
The population of Conisborough and Denaby by will soon be beyond that of Mexborough and I consider this locality is growing in other ways of much more importance than Mexborough or ! Swinton. The Barnsley folk acknowledge this is when the greatest strides are being made – almost of any part in South Yorkshire—and undoubtedly with the development of the railway system, as iodic& indicated by the extension of the Rotherham, Blyth, and Sutton line in a few year’s time it will be seen what a remarkable transformation has been effected.
The little villages dotted here and there the historic township will awake front their stupor and. instead of only having residents merely attending to husbandry—getting up early and going to bed early—there will be an introduction of miners, ironworkers, and other artisans to make the best use of Nature’s resources hereabouts. There are pledge of good folk living only a few miles from the M. B. and L. line who have never been in a train, and who rarely have seen one — they seem “buried ” in the little circle from one year’s end another, and see nothing and know nothing beyond what occurs near their own immediate dwellings.